Maybe, in an attempt to escape the daily drudgery-horror of news about Donald Trump trampling all over the Constitution, you turn to small town local interest stories for some homey tales of bake sales, swap meets, and library bake sales and swap meets. Well, screw you, exhausted news consumer, because, as Stephen Colbert exposed on Friday’s Late Show, even the sleepy Idaho town of Coeur d’Alene isn’t safe from Trump creep. (Note: Coeur d’Alene is actually a pretty robust small city by Idaho standards, but Colbert called his segment “Small Town Big News,” so what are you gonna do.)
Colbert reported on the moderately-covered story about a mysterious and dastardly Idahoan who’s been grabbing so-defined “anti-Trump” books in the Coeur d’Alene Public Library and, in the tradition of grubby little creeps everywhere, hiding them around the place. (One should note that if a supporter thinks books about LGBTQ rights, women getting the vote, and gun control are anti-you, you might be a grubby little creep yourself.) Colbert, explaining that the library loser has also sent a supervillainous note to the no-doubt sighing and head-shaking library staff (because of course he did), read excerpts, complete with sinister disguised voice, of his would-be chilling talk of “liberal tears,” etc. Cue head-shaking and deep sighs of hard-working librarians who find the library copy of Fire And Fury in the crafting section and have to walk the 30 steps to put it back where it belongs.
All fun and games, you say? Well not to Colbert, who went on to reveal that one of the dastardly dingus’ favorite targets is the Late Show Trump-centric children’s book, Whose Boat Is This Boat? “You done messed up, booky-boy!,” Colbert exploded, his mockery turning to mock-dudgeon at the thought of a harmless book consisting of the actual sort-of sentences Trump said to hurricane victims being targeted by Coeur d’Alene’s most irrelevant not-quite criminal. Noting that the book-hatin’ bandit is only ensuring more people will buy a book intended to get under Trump’s let’s-call-it skin, and that all proceeds from the little goof of a book go to chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen (which actually feeds beleaguered disaster victims instead of spouting gibberish at them on the way back to the limo), Colbert, still, wasn’t having it. Therefore, he revealed The Late Show’s gift to the Coeur d’Alene library, a massive, fully functional reproduction of Whose Boat Is This Boat?, complete with library loan-card, Colbert’s suitably oversized autograph, and clothing store security tag. Foiled again, booky-boy.